Linux Tabbing Is Horribly Inconsistent
2009-10-14 10:36 - Linux
It's a very common paradigm for modern software to be able to open multiple files at once. It's nearly as common for software to present a "tabbed" interface for this, but this applies to any multi-document interface. In Windows, every single application (except for truly rare cases, I can only think of one I ever saw) uses Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab to shift to the next and the previous document, respectively. But, so far in Linux I've seen at least:
- Firefox, Chrome, Pidgin: Ctrl-(Shift-)Tab and Ctrl-PgUp/PgDown
- gedit: Ctrl-Alt-PgUp/PgDown
- Gnome Terminal: Ctrl-PgUp/PgDown
- Eclipse: Ctrl-PgUp/PgDown and Ctrl-(Shift-)F6
By far the worst thing is that for all these programs that have some other document navigation key, Ctrl-Tab continues to perform some other, significantly less useful, feature. Thus I'm always getting tripped up. Another way that the interface of Linux gets in the way: I have to think carefully about which program I happen to be using right now, in order to perform the same logical operation.